Prepare for a Time-Twisting Tale

Clever as a Fox

Sherlock Holmes has fascinated millions of people for well over a century. He is the most famous fictional detective of all time. Some consider him to be the most famous fictional character of all time – Harry Potter notwithstanding. To some, it is as if he really existed. To British scholar Richard Lancelyn Green, Holmes and his creator Arthur Conan Doyle were his raison d’etre. His obsession with the character and the man may very well have been the catalyst for his unsolved murder in 2004.

Mysterious Circumstances, written by Michael Mitnick, and based on a New Yorker article by David Grann, is a clever time-twisting tale that moves between the present with Green, the past with Doyle, and a fictional world inhabited by Holmes and Watson. Holmes appears several times, eventually to solve the mystery of Green’s murder.

Clever is the operative word for this play. It is a mystery, a comedy, and a drama that is cleverly staged by Director John Hurley. Chairs on wheels act as a taxi and are used to comic effect in several scenes. Actors transform from one character to another in a flash. Time shifts in a heartbeat. And while that may sound very complex – and it is – it is never confusing. That, in itself, is an accomplishment. In the hands of lesser actors and production teams, it could have been a confusing mess. Instead, each shift feels organic and clearly delineated. 

Green and Holmes

What is it about? you might ask. Green was a wealthy, buttoned-down, repressed man who traveled the world giving talks about his favorite subjects. He had a huge collection of books and other materials relating to Holmes. The McGuffin in the story is a rumored wooden box said to contain various letters, unpublished Holmes stories, and an autobiography by Doyle that Green lusted after as if it were the love of his life. Well, in a sense it was. His search for the box and the events around it form the crux of the story along with the flashbacks to Doyle as he kills off Holmes while his wife is dying. As Doyle rips up and burns a Holmes story upstage, Holmes feels the changes in himself downstage as he and Watson slowly deteriorate. Fact and fiction blend together in another clever concept by the playwright.

Ben Michael Moran plays Green and Holmes in a fine performance. As Green, his passion is only for Holmes. He lights up when he speaks of him as one would a lover. In the bar scenes he is clueless in his ignorance of what is happening when a man attempts to pick him up. While on the surface, the scenes are very funny, Moran also injects pathos into the role of a man unsure of himself as a sexual being who is most comfortable waxing poetic about his favorite subject. As Holmes, he hams it up like crazy and is hilarious, using all the traditional Holmesian bits from old movies. The scene in which Holmes breaks down is very well played. All in all, an excellent performance.

His partner in crime as Watson is the delightful Dave Marciniak, who plays the second banana with a bit of sarcasm about being the second banana, but his love for Holmes is palpable in one of the later scenes. He plays various other roles, as do the rest of the cast.

Jeremy Kreuzer is a hoot as the dead man who is garroted over and over while Holmes ponders options for the murderer. Peter Palmisano plays Doyle as a troubled man, in grief over his wife, and sick of his famous character. Wendy Hall does a fine job as Touie, Doyle’s wife and daughter, Jean. Greg Howze is the mysterious American who is Green’s Moriarty, a cockney Holmes expert and others. Nicholas Lama is Doyle’s publisher, a cab driver, etc. All have created very clearly delineated characters in this sometimes very rapidly-paced play.

A Razor’s Edge

A bright blue neon rectangle acted as a doorway that at first thought might be a portal to the past or future but was not. It seemed out of place in the traditional set, like it had wandered over from a science fiction movie. Other than that, all the elements of the production melded well together to create just the right atmosphere.

In the play, Doyle’s elderly daughter Jean and Green develop a relationship that she then ends because of his obsequious behavior, telling him that there is a razor’s edge between scholarship and obsession. Plays about obsession are disturbing, even when they contain a great deal of humor because the underlying reality is that the person who is driven is powerless, has no choice but to pursue the obsession that will ultimately destroy him. In literature, Heathcliff is one. In life, Conan Doyle spent years going to mediums to try to contact his dead wife. Is Richard Lancelyn Green another? His unsolved murder suggests that may be the case. But only a Sherlock Holmes could unravel that mystery. And he does not exist. Or….?